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Musings on avocado toast

Avocados have gotten a bum rap of late on two fronts. In case you missed it, an Australian real-estate mogul had the gall to assert that the younger generations cannot afford to buy their own homes because they are wasting their money on frivolous items like $19 avocado toast. Needless to say, the social-media backlash was fierce.

Don’t tell me you’ve missed the trendy toast movement altogether. FYI, it’s not all melted margarine slathered on highly processed white bread anymore. The toast I’m speaking of has fancy toppings, including but not limited to avocados, smushed on thick slices of organic sourdough toast. You can order it in restaurants with a variety of additional toppings, at unfathomable prices.

I’ve read about the toast movement but I’ve never gone out to a restaurant in search of avocado toast because I don’t eat out, remember? Since I was placed on a sodium-restricted diet in 2004, I have largely been restricted to reading about the hot new restaurants in town on the internet. Sometimes I salivate at the pictures, but God would punish me if I deigned to consume their wares. Did I mention how much weight I gained on my last vacation, despite my only eating only one pain au chocolate over two weeks? No? Well, let’s keep it that way.

The mogul’s lame argument was countered by a respected business writer at the Globe and Mail. Said writer noted that young people would need to consume over 33 slices of overpriced avocado toast daily to spend the $180,000+ dollars Toronto house prices have risen over the past year alone. Anyone consuming that much avocado toast has a bigger problem than covering her house payments. I suspect a binge eating disorder, but I’d need more information to make a definitive diagnosis.

If these house-less restaurant-going kids decide, instead, to make avocado toast at home in order to save a few dollars, they need to be aware of the second strike against the poor avocado: the potential dangers of avocado-pit removal. According to recent medical reports, a phenomenon dubbed avocado hand is showing up increasingly in ERs everywhere. The injury results from a missed stab at the avocado pit, where the knife slips off and pierces the palm of the hand. These cuts can be deep, and may therefore result in serious infection. A local emerg doc noted that his hospital sees approximately one case of avocado hand weekly.

Thankfully we have socialized medicine in Canada, so that your ER visit will not cost the you anything except your pride. Rest assured the ER docs will view you as one of those earthy millennial types who needed a healthy snack following hot yoga to sustain you through the afternoon.

I’m not that person–I prefer to keep my yoga sweat to myself–yet I confess that I too like avocado toast. I often slather half an avocado on my morning toast, sometimes topping it with an also-trendy poached egg. It’s a surprisingly filling meal. But I’m too cheap to pay $15 for all this rigamarole at a restaurant. I’ll pit my own avocado, thank you very much, very carefully, and pray for no deep-tissue injury since I’m infection prone. Already I’ve cost the health system much more than my share.